He’s beginning to feel sleepy too. He closes his eyes and drowses. The rain keeps falling, the smell of the eaves, musky and hot, mingles with the smell of the child nodding off against him. He slips into a dream in which he’s swimming downstream and the Moody twins are running along the riverbank, barefoot, tripping and skidding in the mud, crying out to him to be careful. Then someone says, ‘Where’s Taisie?’ and he panics, doggy-paddling round and round, his feet thrashing beneath him, looking for a head bobbing in the water.

He tumbles out of the dream with a cry. There’s a creature crawling out of the tightest angle of the eaves, reaching for him with its gnarled hands. It makes a grab for his ears, and he falls back, banging his head on a rafter, but not before it’s glued its mouth to his. He pushes it away and feels the small bud of a pre-pubescent breast under his hand. Someone shrieks and he surfaces, disorientated and grappling for a way out. He knocks his head on the hot bare bulb and it swings nauseatingly. Izzy is hitting him, shouting in his face. ‘Get off me! Don’t touch me.’

She pushes open the door and tries to pull herself out and he isn’t together enough to explain that it was just his weird problem. How would he have explained it, anyway? He hasn’t even told his mum and dad.

But this is the first time it’s touched him. In disgust, he rubs his wrist across his lips, then goes very still. Oh shit. Izzy.

Izzy is scrabbling to get away from him, crawling out of the cubbyhole door.

‘Izzy,’ he says, catching at the hem of her jeans. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.’

But it’s too late, she’s gone.

GRACE

Friday, 20 April 2018

THE WEEKEND IS IMMINENT, AND WITHOUT LOTTIE acting as a buffer between me and Nick’s parents, the prospect is dismal. Douglas texts to say that he’ll pick Lottie up from the house, not the school. I mentioned that Tim and Cora were here and he’s curious, never having met them before.

Half an hour later, he’s outside the front door. I bring him into the kitchen where Cora is reading a book and Tim is scrolling through an article on the iPad. I introduce them and Tim jumps up, a hand outstretched. The men couldn’t be more different; Tim with his big bones, swept back salt-and-pepper hair and handsome, patrician face, has always seemed benign to me, like a 1940s film star. Douglas, thin as a rake, heavy-featured, with his sensual mouth and hard gaze, is intimidating.